Printers can serve as standalone equipment as well as a computer accessory. It generally takes input from the computer and generates output on a paper. It produces output in the form of graphics and text. There are mainly two categories of printers – Impact printers and Non-impact printers. Impact printer makes direct contact with paper. It presses inked ribbon using pins and hammers to produce print on paper. Non-impact papers do not use a striking device and are much quieter.

Impact printers:

Dot Matrix printers: This printer uses pins to form patters of dots on paper to produce characters. A 24 dot matrix printer forms more dots than its 9 dot matrix peer.

Daisy-wheel printers: The printing mechanism works like a daisy where each petal contains a character. The characters get printed on paper, when a hammer presses against the ribbon.

Band printers: It uses a band which generates character upon paper. The steel band comes with five sections of 48 characters each.

Line printers: Line printers are a line at a time printer instead of character at a time type. It can print 1000-6000 lines per minute. Chain, drum and band printers are line printers too.

Chain printers: Wrapped around two pulleys is a chain that prints characters in a chain printer. There is a hammer allocated for each and every print position.

Drum printers: It uses a central drum that raises characters against band on the surface. It offers 80-132 print positions, while rotating at rapid speed.

Non-impact printers:

Ink-jet printers: It uses the principle of dot matrix printer. But it uses tiny droplets of ink to form the dots.

Laser printers: Like a photocopy machine, it directs laser beams at mirror that directs it to drum. As paper goes by the drum, it uses a toner to transform the print to paper.

Recent Posts

KEVIN ROSE

Kevin Rose is a technology investor at True Ventures and serial entrepreneur. He currently serves on the board of directors at HODINKEE and advisory board for the Tony Hawk Foundation, and Harlan Estate. Previously Kevin founded Digg, Revision3, and was a General Partner at Google Ventures.